


Fall

by tillsunrise



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-27
Updated: 2020-11-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:54:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27737968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tillsunrise/pseuds/tillsunrise
Summary: Renee ruminates on the meaning of love, in the context of Allison.
Relationships: Allison Reynolds/Renee Walker (All For The Game)
Kudos: 7





	Fall

**Author's Note:**

> ok but WHY are renee and allison's tags the only ones that have aftg in parentheses, that's so annoying :/

Love isn’t always about grand gestures.

It isn’t always flowers on Valentine’s Day or expensive dinners that make a relationship beautiful. Sometimes it’s holding Allison’s hair back as she pukes over a toilet, regretting however much sex she had last night. Sometimes it’s Renee closing her eyes and remembering the horror of everything that happened to her—back when she was Natalie—and everything that she did and realizing that even if she didn’t have her religion to explain where everything else had failed and when the darkness of which she would always be capable returned, she would still have Allison.

Sometimes it’s about wanting something for yourself for the first time in a long time. Even when Renee hadn’t existed, Natalie had wanted the right to be her own person. Remorseless murder had been one avenue; drugs and alcohol and sex, another. Allison didn’t need to have known Natalie to have appreciated that almost savage desperation that shadowed every action of hers, a crazed need to cement her individuality. And maybe Natalie would have resented Allison for everything she was already born and entitled to—“trailer trash,” she might have spat back at Renee in another life—but Renee was the girl who understood why Allison chose to turn her back on that and feel underneath all the layers and impressions and ideas of the picture-perfect princess to grasp at something, someone real enough to choose her own path. 

Sometimes it’s after practice has ended and Renee’s homework has been finished and it’s time for bed that Renee pulls out her Bible from inside her bedside drawer and pretends to read. Inside are words she has long since memorized, words she has appreciated and adapted to explain the almost tragedy that was her life before Stephanie adopted her. But sometimes, Renee allows herself to look up across the room at an asleep Allison with her blond waves spread around her head, a halo for an angel with the power to choose. 

Renee does not smile, because there is no one else to put up a front for. Renee is real; she has survived; she wonders what sex would be like with someone who actually cared. No gangs in Detroit, no begging to be left alone, no feeling weak, no drugs, no alcohol dulling pain into pleasure and pleasure into pain.

Renee imagines it vividly this particular night, Bible forgotten, cross-legged on her bed. She imagines her hand sliding into Allison’s soft, soft hair, imagines pliant lips and a small gasp of surprise, a dizzying rush better than any drug or alcohol or the pain of missing the two. 

[She might put her Christian piety on hold to teach Neil how to use knives, but she would also put it on hold to teach Allison how to fight.]

It doesn’t take Allison too long to figure this out. First it came with the realization that Renee, Allison, and Dan weren’t just pretending to be friends anymore freshman year. Then it came with the realization that Renee’s gentle touch wasn’t an automatic response to Seth’s death, that it came with the promise that whenever Allison needed or wanted Renee, she would be there. Whatever the need, whatever the cost.

And that’s powerful. But also humbling. Renee doesn’t really ever know if Allison ever reciprocates: they’re both too broken too ever really feel pure or genuine or cutesy like the other girls falling in love. But for now, they both cling to the realest parts of themselves and each other: wet slide of skin, lazy hickeys, interlocked fingers, the thrill of Exy. 

God loves you, Renee reminds herself, even as she makes Allison writhe underneath her, everything perfect about her unraveling into reality and sweet, sweet highs. God loves you, Renee reminds herself, as she tips her head back in a busy nightclub in Columbia and takes the smallest of shots, large enough to sate her teammates but still small enough to stop herself from reaching for more as Natalie might have. God loves you, Renee reminds herself, as she picks up a knife for herself just to make sure she hasn’t forgotten—in the years she gave her knives to Andrew—how to defend not only herself but Allison too. 

“Yes, God loves me,” Renee Walker whispers to no one late into the night and early in the morning, “but so does she.” 


End file.
